Saturday, 5 July 2014

Long-standing readers of Cricket Tragics (is there any
other kind?) will be aware that your erstwhile correspondent is away
in South America for the vast majority of Hyde Heath's 2014 season.
You will no doubt have missed his heroic exploits on the field, and
no doubt the more, his impressive feats of recollection and
reconstruction of it, on these very virtual pages.

Our
replacements have done sterling work in our absence, and – the
occasional barb directed this way notwithstanding – it has been a
pleasure to keep abreast of goings-on at Fortress Heath and beyond
through the perhaps less jaundiced, and certainly less
self-concerned, eyes of Dom and JC.

Men. Cricketers. Heroes.

That said, we note in
passing that the last match report on the Hyde Heath website is from
1st June, a whopping 24 days ago. We'd have received at
least four or five increasingly direct emails from Mrs Capper by now
if such negligence had occurred under our watch...

Anyway,
onwards, to more preamble! As already touched upon, and as these same
long-standing readers will also be aware, Cricket Tragics, tends to
focus on the deeds of the narrator – despite our/my/its/their
slightly confusing oscillation between first person singular and
plural (and even worse, the third person – see above). So they/you
should not be surprised to learn that little will be said about the
historic fixture between Bogota and Cali that we were so privileged
to have umpired earlier this month. (Besides, it was a boring,
one-sided match, and WE ONLY BLOODY WENT AND WROTE ABOUT IT FOR CRICINFO.)

Instead, we'll tell you all about how we got on in
the next day's Twenty20 match by means of bullet points and
subheadings and things (such flair for the bureaucratic style is
sadly missing from HHCC's match reports):

Our ride: sure, the driver was armed....

1. The Arrival
Our
ride to the Bogota Sports Club, on the outskirts of Colombia's
capital city, was befitting of such a valuable cricketing asset as
yours truly: yes, an armour-plated Land Rover laid on by the Ministry
of Defence, aka the British taxpayer (thanks Dad!). Fret ye not,
however, Bogota is not that dangerous (any more); no, we hitched a
list with the British defence attaché – an affable Brummie fellow
with an obsession with sporting celebrities and a tidy line in
medium-paced outswing.

2. The Venue
You
can read more about the club itself in the PIECE WE WROTE ON
CRICINFO, but, in truth, it was a weird, soulless place: vast and
brick and adorned with silly bits of English memorabilia (Wills and
Kate above the mantelpiece: *gags*). Also, apart from the cricketers,
it was populated solely by a few very rich fat men and their tennisy
wives.

The pavvy: not a patch on the Heath's bucolic idyll. Probably nicer than The Plough though...

3. The Pitch
Matting on concrete. Chances of spin?
Zero.

4. The Teams
Bogota vs Cali. Both nice folks by and
large, except for the odd massively competitive Australian, but then
that can happen to the best of us.

5. The Altitude
2,600
metres above sea level means running anything further than three
yards is a nightmare. Even for a well-honed athlete such as
ourselves.

6. The Batting
We (Bogota) won the toss and
batted first and I came in at 4 (or 5) after a steady (or shaky)
start. Wearing borrowed trainers and *gasp* tracksuit bottoms, with a
broken thigh-pad and a box slipping down to my knee upon every minor
movement, it's along time since I felt this amateurish with the bat
in hand. (“Since last season you mean, mate?” “Yup,
hilarious.”)

I somehow survived my first ball despite an
entangulation of bat and pad, saw off their threatening Aussie quick,
and began to really prosper through a combination of gritty blocks,
mistimed straight drives, and the odd almighty nurdle. Then I got run
out following a mix-up with my partner, despite being forewarned by
the umpire that the batsman in question was “a headless chicken”.
Oh well. The team made 111 for 7 off 20 overs, my contribution an
attritional (some might say counter-productive) 10.

7. The
Lunch
Huge plates of burgers and chips were admittedly pretty
tasty, but of course lacked the charm and finesse of the Hyde Heath
tea: cucumber sandwiches, pakoras, slices of melon, chicken tikka
wraps, scones, cakes, scotch eggs... not to mention the bloody tea!
No tea. Unbelievable. Fortunately there was plenty of cheap Colombian
lager instead.

8. The Bowling
I have it on good authority
(I definitely did not just make it up) that nobody has spun a single
ball on the Bogota pitch in all its years of use. So even as
prodigious a ripper as yours truly (3000RPM as standard) was unlikely
to get much out of it. Needless to say, I didn't turn a thing. But I
bowled my two overs tidily enough, didn't go for many, and even got
the crucial wicket of a man in blue tracksuit bottoms who hadn't ever
played cricket before. Bowled leg stump. Oh the glory! Oh the
adulation!

9. The Fielding
In customary fashion, I made my
presence known in the field by dropping a catch. It was actually
quite difficult though – running in from mid-on and diving
forwards, I could only get one hand on the ball and it didn't stick.
Irritatingly I had just been moved ten yards back by the captain the
ball before. You'd never catch Charlie making that mistake...

10.
The End

Anyway, it didn't
matter. Cali never looked like threatening our total and were all out
for 54. Victory! For cricket and for cricket writing too. And the pen
remains sharp for August's eagerly anticipated return to Fortress
Heath.